A good day for Declarations

Another Independence Day is here. I decided to read the Declaration of Independence. Okay, not all of it. I decided to read the beginning of it to the boys. And of course, I couldn't get through the first line without crying.

I have to ponder this a moment . . . . the way that I cry over this document, as well as the Preamble of the Constitution, the occasional John Phillips Sousa song, going to a ballgame for the first time in the season when I haven't gone in a long while. Really, it is sentiment most of the time, and the sweeping drama of politics, and the evocative way some speeches feel more like a sermon of a certain variety.

But I also believe it is something deeper than that. Maybe it is simply hope. I do have hope for our country as messed up as it is, as messed up as we are, as messed up as the world is. There is beauty in all that mess. Just like the rest of the world, too; we don't have a corner market on beauty or truth or justice or happiness, or even messes. When we think we do, we are only fooling ourselves. America has much to offer, and much of that promise is about hope, about courage, and about standing up for our beliefs. It is about saying no to what is wrong, making declarations of all kinds; even positively silly ones, like the President shouldn't kill a fly. Making simple, but important declarations, like voting. But we also have so much to learn.

About a month ago I was with a few friends, sitting on a porch. In the course of the discussion my friend Sue mentioned a book called Forgotten Founders, How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy, by Bruce E. Johansen. She explained what she had read: Benjamin Franklin was a friend to the people of the Iroquois Nation. In understanding the ways the Six Nations (of the Iroquois) worked together, he was greatly influenced and impressed. And being so influential in the creation of the Declaration of Independence and our nation as a whole, Franklin communicated much of the Iroquois' best principles of governance to the men that forged the new government of the United States. As she went into this in more detail, I found the tears streaming down my face.

Growing up in Connecticut I had heard much about this Revolutionary battle and that one, 'George Washington slept in our town!' kind of stuff, but the only things I ever heard about the American Indians were the things my Dad told me. Things that had to do with his love of the Indian stories he had read at the library, and playing with his friends in the woods of Old Wethersfield. Or in school, they shared food (and information about food), so the pilgrims didn't die in the first few winters on this continent. I had not been told of this delicate, yet powerful relationship that had the influence of forming the words, of shaping the ideas of our "more perfect union."

Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1770, "The Care and Labour of providing for Artificial and Fashionable Wants, the sight of so many rich wallowing in Superfluous plenty, whereby so many are kept poor and distressed for Want, the Insolence of Office . . . . and restraints of Custom, all contrive to disgust them [Indians]with what we call civil Society. --marginalia in Matthew Wheelock, Reflections, Moral, and Political on Great Britain and Her Colonies

And far before then, Franklin wrote to James Parker in 1751, "It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies."

Fortunately for us now, the dozen English colonies did work something out, made their way to saying, "enough!" to King George, and 233 years as an independent nation isn't anything to sneeze at, though I know we still have much to learn if we are to make it many more. I'm grateful for the courage of those men to risk their lives in seeking to build something new, from ideas gleaned outside themselves, as much as any inspirations within.

And I have hope we can figure out how to live in this world together, not only as a nation, but as human beings. To live in our mess, the messes we have made of our lives, and our planet. Our lives are on the line, certainly our pursuits of happiness, but unless we begin to address some of the issues of clean air, clean water, non-toxic food and sustenance for all people, understanding among people with different ideas or lifestyles, it will be our undoing. We cannot ignore those we may disagree with, nor plow them over with our tanks, nor lock them away; we must listen to one another, and learn from one another, tolerate our differences in order to be free in our own lives. So I'm thanking Great Spirit for this nation where there are people who are still saying, "enough" . . . . Or "I am standing up to be recognized for who I am in all my uniqueness, with my valid beliefs, and personal choices." Courage, brothers and sisters, children, and mothers. We still have much to fight for.

Happy Birthday, America. Best wishes for Health, prosperity, and every Happiness life has to offer.

I have to go now because it is time to be with the boys much more than I have been while writing this. zach wanted to write his name (and he just did right there). There are things to take to the barbecue, and fireworks to watch .....

Won't it be an amazing world when the only fireworks are for celebration rather than the bombs and fire cracks of war?